What Was New on the Library Web - 1995 Archive

December 1995

Reduce, reduce, reduce! What are we, the Jenny Craig of the Library
world? Are my Elvis plate collection and waistline the only things
bulking up around here this holiday season? Find out more about the Library's
slimming regime in the latest Jane Fonda-endorsed
Academic Services Planning Group planning update[this page removed from the server].

Good news for researchers who need help finding the perfect
long-winded, incomprehensible, intellectually bloated article about
the raging controversy over paper vs. plastic. Michelle Turner has
done a terrific job of marking up the Gopher version of the
Current Contents guide. Update your links people!

You're drinking 10 glasses of water a day, getting plenty of rest,
going to the gym 3 days a week, and you haven't ingested anything
containing more than 3 grams of fat since the Bush administration.
Yet you still feel like how Howard Stern looks, on a good day. What to do?
Check out Debbie Jan's fabulous new collection of internet links to health
resources. You'll feel better, I promise.

Those dysfunctional adult children in Washington have let us down
again. But America's crack team of government documents librarians
(fresh from a recent conference near Graceland), are on the job, making
sense of the double-talk generated by these and other public
servants. If you'd like to find out what jingles these cats' bells, dive
into Resources of Use to Government Documents Librarians,
compiled by Andrea Sevetson. Go ahead, you know you want to.

Sometimes I just can't get riled up about the latest embarrassing
fiasco perpetuated by the dunderheads in our nation's capitol. Instead,
I like to get ticked off about what's going on here at home, in
climately-challenged California. To assist me in my quest for the inside
scoop on the Golden State, I can now tune in to California
Planning Resources courtesy of Debby Sommer.

November 1995

Wondering why you've been craving Tang and peanut butter flavored
Space Food Sticks? No, it's not because Carl Sagan has mastered
mind control and has billions and billions of us in his power. It's
because you've sensed the cosmic energy flux caused by 1) William
Shatner's new hair piece, and 2) the emergence of the very exciting
Astronomy/Mathematics/Statistics Library home page! The graphics are gorgeous,
the astronomy links are mesmerizing, and the math and stat links are, well,
uh, numerical.

I won't be a bit suprised if Architectural
Features, 2nd Floor, Doe Library - GSSI turns up on a few
"What's Cool" lists. It's truly an impressive piece of design and
composition on the part of Mary Scott and Christof Galli. I just hope
they
follow up this superlative effort with a video clip of trapped doves
dropping bombs all over the GSSI collection, and monster-sized
painting!

Come on, everybody say it together ... Euuuuuu! What's the world
coming to? EuroDisney's showing a profit ahead of schedule, and the European Union
(EU) wants to tell you all about its principle organs. This
site is chocked full of fab info, words that make you spit (e.g.
Maastricht),
and nifty graphics. Open a box of California wine, you might be here
awhile ...

I don't usually like to talk about constipation in
such a public forum, but it sure is good to see that General
Social Science resources have migrated from the gopher to the Web!

At this moment, there are 800,000 non-essential federal workers, back
at work, and in need of a hug. Their collective self esteem has reached an
all time low. Gun stores have closed their doors today, just to be on the
safe side. Not even John Bradshaw's inner child could perk up this sorry
bunch. So it's a good thing for us that our federal colleagues cranked
out the1980 Census before Congress and The Prez got their number!

Folks who work on reference desks can FINALLY easily answer what must
surely be their most frequently asked questions ... "What are your Slavic
and Eastern European holdings in the Chemistry Library? In the
Education-Psychology Library? In the Engineering Library? In the
Map Library? In the Astronomy/Math/Statistics Library?
In the
Pacific Film Archive? In the Physics Library?
Allan, your collegues thank you.

October 1995

Do you think that the Engineering Library should spend more of its
acquisition budget on books about the structural design of the air and
gas ducts in Graceland? Well I do, and thanks to Jeanne Fong I
can now electronically send my acquisition suggestions to the
Engineering Library, instead of scribbling notes to Camille Wanat on
cocktail napkins! Experience ENGI'sBook Purchase
Recommendation Form for yourself. Tell Jeanne that Elvis sent
you.

Watch out Antonio Banderas, Gary Handman's coming to town! That's
right, our own cure for the media impaired will be doing his thing
November 6-10 at the Media in Academic Libraries conference in Barcelona, Spain.
Senor Banderas is scheduled to give the keynote address entitled "1001
uses of Brillcreme, and why I agreed to act in a Sylvester Stallone film."

Can't afford a trip to the cradle of stinky cheese and depressing
black and white flicks? Then join me in a digital jaunt to the
Western European Studies page. Berets, as always,
are optional.

I don't know about you, but I just can't get enough of Ralph's
Academic Services Planning Goup planning updates. But beware, the latest
installment, Planning Update - October 18, 1995, includes
gratuitous usage of the words "clustering," "postulates," and "tottering." [this page removed from the server].

October 1995

Suzanne McMahon of SSEALS has now made it easier for us to broaden our
horizons and visit exotic places. Consult the Fall 1995 Calendar of Events
for the Center
for South Asia Studies before you buy those outrageously
expensive Billy Ray Cyrus tickets!

O.K., a student comes to your library's reference desk and tells you
that she has to write a paper on the political socio-economic
ramifications of Elvis' death with regards to the New York Stock
Exchange.
Where do you start looking for information? GSSI has given this a great
deal of thought, and I must say that Selected
Social Science Indexes/Abstracts and Databases gives librarians and patrons a
useful information-seeking advantage.

Suposedly the truth is out there. But can you
handle the truth? No? Then take a peek at the full-text version of
materials published by the Government
Printing Office. I can't guarantee that you'll find an
ex-Senator's repulsive diaries there, but Andrea Sevetson has guaranteed
that you'll be
treated to the cutest bears this side of Oskie!

Before you sink your life savings into marketing the
world's first water-powered computer in Lichtenstein, consult Pat
Maughan's Berkeley Business Guide #22 International
Business Research. You'll thank me
later.

Our mighty Map Room cowboy, John Creaser has been adding goodies
to the Library Web at a break-neck pace. He really deserves his
own Whats-New page... Not! Recently John has added new ways to digitally
figure out where the heck you are on this crazy planet. Map
Images in the Eart Science Collection is a good place to
begin your quest. GEOREF: The Bibliography and Index of Geology has been sighted on
the Web, as well as Geological
Surveys & Natural Resources Departments, Associations &
Societies around the world. Dig it?

Although the dust has yet to settle,
new Library organization charts are available from the Staff Materials page.

September 1995

Hand out the cigars (or pipes for Ralph), Jeanette Garay has just
given birth to a gorgeous and informative web presence for the
General Reference Service. Start with the GRS
homepage, and just get wacky. [This page has been removed from the Library Web. Please see http://www.berkeley.edu/doemoff/reference.html].

Debby Sommer contributed pages for City and Regional
Planning, which added that topic to the list of UCB and
Internet Resources page -- a page, by the way, that should be much
preferred over the InfoLib gopher list of "Research Databases and
Resources by Subject" for accessing information on the Internet.

The Public Health
Library now has an impressive Web presence, with links to
some of their Research
Guides, the Quick Guide to MEDLINE Plus on MELVYL, and other information about the branch and
Public Health research.

July 1995

The Earth Sciences and
Map Library has begun to mount some of their maps on the
Library Web. In the future, map images
on-line will develop into a descriptive as well as visual tour of
many of the cartographic images available in their collection. So far,
they have added sections on Topographic maps, Nautical charts and
Facsimile maps.

The Library Staff Directory is now up on the web, in
order by: Name and
Unit.

To make the "By Name" directory easier to use while also automating the
markup, Alvin Pollock creating a script to take the plain text directory
and make a much more useable Web page. Thanks Alvin!

Contributing information to the Library Web just became much easier
with the introduction of the Minimal Markup
Form. You may use this form to quickly create a Web document
from
simple text (which can be easily copied and pasted from a WordPerfect
document).

To provide more information regarding the reorganization of the
Library, Access Services has made some of its planning documents
available, specifically the Access
Services Strategic Plan and
the Access Services Organization Chart

June 1995

The South/Southeast Asia
Library has a much-expanded and updated presence, particulary in
support of the South Asia collections. Suzanne McMahon put it together, along with graphics
assistance from Mary Scott of the Graphics Office.

A new item in support of Library Web development is a new
Minimal
Markup Template that allows data owners to drop their text between a
set of PRE (pre-formatted text) tags, add a title, a header, and
their name and leave it at that. This will soon be followed with an even
easier way to be a Web author! (Stay tuned)

Our sister Web site, for the InfoPeople Project, has
mounted the California Library Directory, a very useful directory of California
public library facilities. Information for each library and branch
includes the address, telephone, fax, number of people served, and often
other information such as the hours, etc.

Newspaper Title
List of Current SubscriptionsForeign Newspapers Currently Received on Newspaper or Microfilm (this
list is a subset of the list above)
U.S. Newspapers Currently Received on Newspaper or Microfilm (this
list is a subset of the list above)

The Teaching
Library has put up a number of very useful guides to such
things as GLADIS,
and other general topics. Links are being made from other
appropriate locations to these guides, such as from the newly revised Library Catalogs page.

Break out your shades and a nice cool drink, the Summer
Reading List is here! Brought to us by the Teaching Library and
the
Office of
Educational Development, this yearly compilation includes the favorite
titles
of campus faculty for incoming freshman to read before they
hit the textbooks here. Have at it!

The InFoPeople
Project web server is now up and running here as a part of our
cooperation with that State Library funded project to bring information
to the people of California via Internet connections in public libraries
throughout the state.